Traitor
by PennEternity
Summary: Shyu agrees completely with the monkey-faced commander.  They are all traitors.


**I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender**

The crescent isle slowly faded into the sunset, still spitting fire. Tongues of magma, lava, he corrected himself, curled into the ocean. All that remained of the once powerful temple teetered, preparing for the final leap into oblivion. The island would not forget this catastrophe.

Shyu blinked. The island disappeared.

Like everything else, he thought, Like his grandfather and father. Like the Avatar. Like the honour and wisdom with had once been so integral to the fire sages.

The monkey-faced captain, commander, was speaking, calling them traitors.

Shyu agreed. They were traitors, traitors to abandon the Avatar, traitors to bow their heads and kowtow to an inflated, bratty child in an army uniform.

There was silence among the Fire Sages. Wa Yong, the Great Sage, was angry and miserable, the liver spots on the crown of his bald head almost purple in the setting sun. Shyu wondered, briefly, where Wa Yong's special hat was. Wa Yong's stared wildly around the ship, his eyes flashing to Shyu, glaring at him, holding him responsible for the loss of his position, his place in the Fire Nation, his home, and, Shyu supposed, his hat.

Shyu stared back. He wasn't sure why Wa Yong was so surprised by his loyalty to the Avatar. It was, he mused, rather predictable, actually. After all, his grandfather Kaja _had_ known Avatar Roku. And his father, Tokado, _had_ been banished by Azulon, for preaching of the Avatar's imminent return. A dry smile crept over Shyu's face.

The monkey-faced commander stopped in front of Shyu. He said something. Shyu frowned. The man repeated what he had said, spittle flying from his mouth, bending down from his advantageous height of perhaps one or two inches.

Shyu frowned yet again. "I'm sorry," he said, politeness dripping from every last pore of his body. "I don't speak monkey."

The man roared in anger, gesticulating furiously, fire bursting out from his fingertips. No control to speak of, Shyu thought disdainfully.

Hanyo, the next youngest Fire Sage, at the sprightly age of 69, hid his smirk.

The commander pointed down into the depths of the ship, gibberish and smoke flying from his lips. Shyu was surprised there was no steam coming out of his ears.

The soldiers gathered round the Fire Sages, moving them closer and closer to the bowels of the ship. Hanyo descended down the steel staircase first, still looking slightly amused, towering over the soldiers who walked with him. Matsu followed him, his nose still scrunched up, beady little eyes glaring from the guards to Shyu to that monkey commander to Shyu and back to Shyu again. Peng was next, dwarfed by guards, looking almost like the monkey commanders grandfather, albeit an extremely short one.

Shyu smiled. He could see Peng spawning the irascible and brutish soldier.

Wa Yong scowled. "Are you pleased with yourself?" he hissed, straining against the corded muscle of the two Fire Nation soldiers holding him in place. "You've single-handedly destroyed everything that the Sages stand for. We will all die."

Shyu blinked. He paused, considered everything he wanted to say, which was currently rolling to the tip of his tongue. He could shout, say that Wa Yong and the others were traitors, that they had screwed up most foully, that they should be begging for the Avatar's mercy on bended knee. He could take the high road, loftily ignoring everything that dripped from Wa Yong's lips. He could call Wa Yong a carbuncle on the backside of humanity, which would make Shyu feel slightly better, but would have the dismal aftereffects of completely alienating the other Fire Sages, as opposed to mostly alienating them, something, he realized with no small degree of sadness, he had already done.

Finally Shyu sighed, staring at Wa Yong owlishly.

"Whatever."

Wa Yong stared back incredulously, all the while being bundled down the stairs to some horribly cramped metal cell, no doubt in the very depth of the metal machine, probably near where the mechanics kept the oil, or maybe the sewage.

Shyu was prodded roughly in the shoulders. Half surprised, he glanced around, staring at the vanishing sun, at the blank skull faces of the two Fire Nation guards. He suddenly had an urge to attack, to scream his fury and anguish out to the four corners of the world, to replace the smugness and total wrongness, the horrid attitude of the monkey commander man with total fear, fear of Shyu, the greatest, most powerful Fire Sage in history!

He had only taken a quarter of a step towards Monkey Man. The soldiers grabbed him, their muscles tightening veins popping out along their wrists and neck. Monkey Man took a hurried step backward, surprised and slightly afraid of the impossible rage on Shyu's face.

Good, Shyu thought. He should be very afraid.

But the soldiers began dragging him down towards the trapdoor, hands clamped around Shyu's burning arms. He knew the soldiers' gauntlets were half melted already, and small hisses escaped from within the helmets. The soldiers did not let go.

Metal began obscuring his vision, silvery-grey. It covered the flaming orange color of the sky. Shyu's eyes strained for one last glimpse of his destroyed home, one last chance to show that monkey-like commander man exactly what he thought of him.

But Shyu's tired eyes took in something else: a small black dot, minuscule, practically invisible to the naked eye. But Shyu was a Fire Sage, the last loyal Fire Sage, and he knew what that dot was. He stopped struggling, his body temperature cooled. The guards breathed twin sighs of relief as they dragged Shyu deeper into the ship, where the other sages were no doubt waiting for Shyu, ready to curse and shout and stamp their feet, furiously with his supposed betrayal.

Shyu could accept that. His mind was filled with images of a giant flying bison; a tiny lemur wearing a jeweled hat, belonging to a once-_great _Fire Sage; a sarcastic boy, waxing poetic about boomerangs and various forms of meat; a girl, hiding an impressive talent, blue eyes filled with concern; and, of course, a bald, tattooed boy, weighted down with the fate of the world.

When guards threw Shyu into the cell, where Hanyo, Matsu, Peng and Wa Yong waited, varying levels of anger on their faces, Shyu was smiling. And he continued smiling, content in the knowledge that he had done his part to help the Avatar on his epic journey.

He could deal with everything else.

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